The politics of blogs: Australian
feminism online
Abstract: Social movement theorists have developed several concepts to
explain the role of critical culture and social networking in maintaining
social movements. This is particularly relevant for periods when levels of
public activism are low due to backlash, hostile social contexts, and
structural uncertainties. As part of my study of the women’s movement
online and feminist blog networks in Australia, I provide a review of
several of these concepts, interrogating their applicability to the study of
online communities. This paper assesses the relevance of the social
movement
theory
concepts
of
submerged
networks,
abeyance
structures, and the related idea of counterpublics for the study of blog
networks generally and feminist blog networks in particular.
Introduction
The feminist blogosphere in Australia is an online community that is
reproducing
existing
feminist
discourses,
challenging
mainstream
discourses, and generating new discourses. This is an example of a social
movement online, with discourse as the mode of activism. Most research
into social movements online focus on protest organisation, whereas I
wish to look at the potential for discursive change as a result of online
communities. This research is important not just for our understanding of
the
current
understanding
situation
of
the
of
feminism
role
of
in
online
Australia
but
discursive
also
for
communities
our
in
contemporary social movements.
1
The appearance of online feminist communities has been noted by several
commentators on third wave feminism (e.g. Bulbeck 2000, 6; Harris
2001, 128), and cyberfeminism (Rowe 2008; Wajcman 2004, 62).
However the significance of these communities and online discursive
communities more generally has not been explored by social movement
researchers. Both discourse communities and online activism continue to
occupy a marginal place in social movement studies (Downing 2001, 26).
Preconceptions
movement
about
research,
online
communications
preventing
social
have
movement
inhibited
social
theorists
from
recognising the realities of contemporary social movements. I draw on
discursive models for political change to propose an understanding of
online communities as structures for political action. The challenge here is
to develop a toolkit that social movement researchers can use to
understand and analyse online discursive activism.
Social movement activity occurs in discourse as well as through
conventional modes of protest activity, such as lobbying and protest
aimed at states. Social movement theory must be useful for the study of
online social movement activity, if it is to remain relevant for the study of
contemporary social movements. As Baym (2006, 82-83) argued, “[t]he
theories that we have developed to explain social organization need to be
able to address new media”.
2
The social movement concepts of abeyance and submerged networks may
be usefully developed to challenge the view of social movements as
characterised largely by hand-to-hand and face-to-face activism, opening
the way for a new understanding of the role of new media and internet
communities. These approaches take seriously the role of discourse
communities in social movements. While concepts that deal with discourse
have been developed in social movement theory, they have not been
tested in the context of online communities, although they are highly
relevant to research on the ways that online communities can motivate
people politically and help activist discourses reach a wider audience.
Social movements and the blogosphere
What are the realities of contemporary social movements and how can
social movement theory contribute to interpretating these realities? Online
social networking has become an increasing part of people’s use of the
internet, and activist cultures have developed within these social
networks. Networks of political blogs engage with and disrupt the
discourse of the mainstream media, by responding to political events with
alternative perspectives, by criticising the ideological stances implicit in
the media, and sharing information on systemic injustices and issues not
given
coverage
in
the
press
(Bahnisch
2006).
Social
networking
applications become the spaces in which political protests are organised
and planned, as well as the locations of political protest themselves, as
will be seen in my case study. Young people in particular use the internet
as the place in which they do politics, not only by organising politically and
3
seeking political information, but also by engaging in political debate
(Olsson 2006, 124). Much online activism is politically transformative in
that it encourages people to rethink their relationship with their media
environment (Meikle 2004, 75-76).
So, as Graham Meikle (2004, 73) has argued, “one simple reason for
studying contemporary activism [online] is that there's an awful lot of it
going on”. Blog networks are often political networks – it is not the
individual blog post that is politically significant, but the network of
interlinked blog posts on a shared topic (Bruns 2006, 12). Blogs are
social, and the networks that form between blogs are dense and highly
informal (Lovink 2008, 38; Rettberg 2008, 57), but in some ways quite
resilient, due to the practice of providing lists of permanent links or
‘blogrolls’ on each blog. But it is the day-to-day interlinkage and exchange
between bloggers that make blog networks a medium for the political.
Instead of the traditional top down media model, individuals can become
nodes
in a
network
in which
the
audience
becomes
capable
of
broadcasting back, and thus become active agents in discourse, or
“connected and networked interlocutors” (Hartley 2009, 95). What
significance could such a change in “social network markets” (Hartley
2009, 11) have for social movements?
A lot of analysis surrounding blogs tends to focus on their potential as
sites of citizen journalism, in which ordinary people can actively engage
with “the news” by engaging in journalism of their own, and thus the
discussion tends to take place from within the discourses of journalism,
4
with a focus on journalistic issues such as truth and representation
(Bahnisch 2006, 140; Bruns 2006, 12; Rettberg 2008, 84-110). While of
course this is a significant development for media studies, I am more
concerned with blogging as political action. Blogs that criticise the
mainstream press frequently do so from a stated political position or
perspective. In the case of the Australian feminist blogosphere, this
perspective is feminist, although intersecting with multiple identities and
critical of multiple systems of oppression (Mowles 2008, 36). Australian
feminist blogs both link to and include discussions around disability rights,
transgender rights, socio-economic issues, and racism, among others.
These blog networks function to critique the ideology of mainstream
discourses in order to change them, i.e. they have an instrumental goal
(or more than one instrumental goal). In this way, blogging is a political
act (as opposed to being simply about the political) that has an
instrumental political motivation; that of social change, and should be
recognised as such (Mowles 2008, 45).
How are we to understand the role of blogs from within a discipline that is
caught up in its own epistemological crisis? The field of social movement
theory is split between the structural approaches of political process
theory and resource mobilisation, emphasising political opportunities,
activist organisations and mobilisation networks, protest events and
actions, and resources; and the constructivist approach that emphasises
culture, framing processes, emotions, and identity (Klandermans and
Staggenborg
2002,
xii;
Kurzman
2004,
111-112;
Mische
2003;
Staggenborg 2008, 84; Tilly 2002, 78). The role of the internet in social
5
movements has been sidelined in these debates, with most studies of
internet activism originating firmly from within the former perspective,
leading to an emphasis on conventional political action and the structural
inadequacies of the net for creating such action. The problem with
studying the internet from a structuralist perspective is that the insights of
new social movement theory are lost in understandings of politics online,
leaving the roles of identity, emotion, culture and discourse unexamined.
This leads to a “denial of ‘the political’” online (Mouffe 2005, 4).
The internet in social movement studies
How has social movement theory dealt with the internet up until this
point? Attention to internet activism has been marginal at best. Cohen &
Rai’s Global Social Movements (2004), Downing’s Radical Media (2001)
and Van de Donk et al.’s Cyberprotest (2004) are some of the few
volumes devoted to online activism from the perspective of social
movement studies. Activism that takes place in non face-to-face contexts
has not been considered as significant or worthy of study as face-to-face
activism. Elin (2003) discusses the perception that if activism does not
involve the body it cannot really be activism. It is perceived as a visible
and visceral phenomenon, a spectacle that brings to mind images of a
man in front of a tank, flowers thrust in the face of police officers or
soldiers, unarmed civilians blinded by pepper spray, or swept off their feet
by water cannons. Internet activism seems to have no place amongst
these images. “Can you really put your body on the line online?”, ask
McCaughey and Ayers (2003), and if not, “when can a purely textual
6
presence actually cause political change?” This implies that it is the risk of
activism that actually causes the political change. The majority of social
movement theorists’ discussions of online social movements look at the
potential for the internet to facilitate conventional protest mobilisation and
organisation (Ayres 1999; Diani 2000; Edelman 2001; Staggenborg
2008).
Another subset of social movement researchers explore the internet’s
potential for developing deliberative politics, political participation, and
social capital, as well as the possibility for developing a globalised political
sphere (Albrecht 2006; Ayres 1999; Best & Krueger 2005; Edelman 2001;
della Porta and Diani 2006). The concept of social capital looks at the
connections among individuals, as well as the levels of trust and
reciprocity that develop between them, and how these connections when
formed online may facilitate political action and allow people to hold
elected leaders accountable (Norris 2002, 138; Putnam 2000).
Meyer & Tarrow (1998, 14) noted that the internet has led to innovations
in information sharing, and enabled activist networks to expand across
geographic and social boundaries. In Diani’s (2000, 388) comparison of
virtual and real social movement networks, he acknowledges the potential
of the internet to affect political activism by reducing the costs of
communication, encouraging broader discussion, and allowing ease of
access to information. Diani (2000) asks very pertinent questions about
whether new types of activism will arise from internet use and whether
the “virtual” and the “real” are in fact separate. However, Diani (2000,
7
389-390) privileges “direct” (i.e. face-to-face) communication over non
face-to-face communication, draws a dichotomy between public and
private modes of communication, and considers online communication as
“disembodied” communication, because the anonymity of participants
breaks with the conventional concept of the public sphere. In a discussion
of online social networks, della Porta and Diani (2006) state that
“[e]mpirical evidence on the type of ties established by CMC [ComputerMediated Communication] so far is mixed”. Some show “some degree of
solidarity and mutual trust” while others suggest that online relationships
need to be backed up by “real social linkages” in order to develop the
levels of trust required for a true community.
Staggenborg (2008, 41) sees the internet as an extension or expansion of
the possibilities of non face-to-face communication in movements, and the
internet “provides a quick, low cost means of reaching a large number of
potential
supporters”.
Garrett
supported
this,
showing
that
lower
communication costs can increase communication and the benefits of
participation (Garrett, 2006). Unfortunately, this emphasis on cost
effectiveness misses the unique discursive potential of the internet –
communication online is not only free, it is also different (Palczewski
2001, 163). Staggenborg (2008) and Garrett (2006) also emphasised the
organisational potential of the internet as the most important topic of
research for social movement theorists, rather than its discursive
potential. However, Staggenborg (2008) elsewhere acknowledged the
critical importance of culture and submerged networks, arguing that “we
need to look for social movement activity in a variety of venues rather
8
than only in publicly visible protests targeted at states” (Staggenborg
2008, 84).
In conclusion, there has been little analysis of the role that online
communities might play in discursive politics in spite of the growing
recognition of culture as a force in social movements. Aspects of social
movement activity that are not explicitly orientated towards traditional
political action continue to be undervalued. Social movement researchers,
including those who emphasise the cultural aspects of social movements,
have focused on online movement mobilisation and organisation. Within
social movement studies, the role the internet has to play in developing
discursive communities has not been explored (Palczewski 2001, 162).
Downing (2001, 24) noted that “[i]t is on the edge of being weird that
there is so little systematic analysis of communication or media in the
social movement literature”.
Polletta (2006, 5) urged social movement theorists to “flesh out the
discursive and organizational mechanisms by which culture defines the
bounds of strategic choice, rather than locating those mechanisms in
people's heads” and argued that the field of social movement research is
an especially useful field in which to discover the relationship between
culture, structure, and political efficacy. I argue that in order to do this,
social movement theory needs to address its own epistemological
contradictions, and develop a toolkit that can adequately address both
discursive politics and online social movements. The internet is part of a
broader cultural change that impacts on the ways people use and
9
consume the media (Meikle 2004, 76). This has significance for social
movements, the processes of which will continue to change as society
changes (Everard 2000, 159; Kahn and Kellner 2003, 14).
Discursive politics and social movement theory
There are several concepts that have been developed in social movement
theory that deal explicitly with discursive politics. The significance of these
concepts for the study of social movements online lies in their recognition
of the role of discourse in social movements, rather than focusing on
social movement organisation and traditional political action targeted at
states. However these concepts are inadequate to address the significance
of
discursive
politics
online,
because
they
carry
with
them
the
assumptions of traditional social movement theory by separating political
action from discourse. I will discuss two of the concepts, abeyance and
submerged networks, in this paper.
The concept of abeyance was developed by Taylor (1989) to offer a model
to explain social movement continuity, using a case study of feminism in
the United States between the first and second waves. Abeyance is a
holding pattern in which activists reproduce the ideology of a movement,
and maintain its structures, without being highly active and visible in
public spaces (Bagguley 2002, 170). The second concept is Melucci’s
(1989, 1996) concept of submerged networks. Submerged networks are
made up of the relationships between participants in social movements
that are hidden from public view, through which people communicate and
1
0
exchange information with each other, while also negotiating a collective
identity and developing a sense of belonging (Melucci 1996).
Taylor’s (1989, 761) abeyance theory relies heavily on the premises of
resource mobilisation theory, which is that “political opportunities and an
indigenous organisational base are major factors in the rise and decline of
movements”.
Taylor
(1989)
characterised
abeyance
structures
as
centralised and ‘elite-sustained’ organisations (Staggenborg 2008, 32).
Bagguley (2002, 171) argues that it might be difficult to apply Taylor’s
theory to movements sustained by informal forms of association, which
would
include
the
internet.
Taylor
(1996)
does
acknowledge
the
importance of including informal networks such as self help groups in our
understanding of social movements, as such “temporary, partial, and
fragile relationships” are characteristic of contemporary society (Taylor
1996, 103). However, if abeyance is taking place in new online contexts
where before it occurred in centralised organisation, this brings into
question the adequacy of a structuralist approach in contemporary social
movement research.
Melucci’s (1989, 1996) submerged networks expand the definition of
social movement networks to include informal, discursive communities.
The concept of submerged networks seeks to understand what happens
within social movements at the non-visible level, and in the course of
everyday life. As Staggenborg (2008, 84) summarises, submerged
networks are as critical to social movements as the contentious politics
that make up their visible part, and help explain the maintenance and
1
1
development of the social movements themselves. In spite of this
recognition, both abeyance theory and submerged networks display a
basic ambivalence toward informal networks and the role of discourse in
politics. This ambivalence has its roots in the epistemological foundations
of these theories.
The word “abeyance” has its origins in Mizruchi’s (1983) theory of social
regulation, which is a structuralist theory (Mizruchi 1983, 1). Abeyance
structures emerge when society lacks “sufficient status vacancies to
integrate surpluses of marginal and dissident people” (Taylor 1989, 762).
Abeyance structures function to retain challengers to the status quo,
during times when the social system will not tolerate direct challenge. In
this way the abeyance organisation succeeds in “building a support base
and achieving a measure of influence”, in spite of a “nonreceptive political
and
social
environment”
(Taylor
1989,
762).
Ultimately
discourse
communities function to retain or constrain social movement actors rather
than being political in themselves, and even though Taylor (1989)
modifies her theory of abeyance structures to show how they had
consequences in the next wave of the movement, discourse is not valued
for its political consequences but for its maintenance properties.
Melucci (1995, 41; 1996, 30) sees social movement communities as
having a unique capacity to “break the rules of the game” by expanding
the limits of possible social behaviour and discourse, however he makes a
distinction between movements working for political reform or change and
those working in the “cultural sphere” (1996, 36-37). Melucci (1996)
1
2
characterises these networks as only political in the sense that they create
the individual, cognitive conditions for engagement in political activity,
rather than understanding submerged networks as political communities
with impacts on social life and structures of meaning. Melucci (1995, 41)
claimed that:
In the past twenty years emerging social conflicts have not expressed
themselves through political action, but rather have raised cultural
challenges to the dominant language, to the codes that organize
information and shape social practices.
This opposition reifies the public/private split. Cultural, identity-based
politics are seen as private, internal, cognitive, and personal, and
although cultural change is a goal of social movements, it is incidental
rather than central, and not considered political in itself. Young (1997,
156-165) criticised this conception of submerged networks in her book on
the discursive politics of the feminist movement. She argues that while
new social movement theorists have come to acknowledge the importance
of cultural change as an outcome of social movement activity, this is
located at the level of identity. Social movement actors participate in
social movements for psychological rather than political reasons, in order
to affirm their own identity, and this is “a formulation that depoliticises
these movements” (Young 1997, 158).
So, while recognising the importance of culture in the processes of social
change, Melucci (1996, 36-37) artificially separates the cultural from the
1
3
political. In his view there are social movement actors who prepare the
public for political change through cultural discourse, and other actors who
then “process” the issue through “political means”. Although Melucci is a
social constructivist, his approach betrays a belief that social discourse
only has the power to change the individual, and not society itself. While
social movement theory has much to offer a social movement theoretical
analysis of online communities, by exploring the potential of submerged
networks to create “cultural” change, it is limited by its psychological
approach.
Case study: Hoyden About Town and the Triple J Hottest 100
On the 30th of June 2009 a guest blogger on the popular Australian
feminist group blog Hoyden About Town wrote a post called “Alternative
Youth Music Station Thinks There’s No Alternative to Being a Bloke”
(“orlando” 2009). In the article, she criticised Triple J Radio’s “potted
history” of contemporary music that was posted on their website in the
run-up to the vote for the Triple J Hottest 100 of All Time.
“Of the 59 album covers shown to illustrate, NONE were put out by female
artists” (“orlando” 2009). The entry is “tagged” with the word “erasure”
and the post includes these words as well. She argues that the music
industry has worked hard to exclude women, and once they broke through
(as many have), “now Triple J erases them all over again” and this
“erasure of female artists distorts the history of popular music” (“orlando”
2009). “Orlando” argued for the importance of “drawing Triple J’s
1
4
attention to what it means when they do things like this” and she and
other Hoyden readers and contributors wrote letters to Triple J website
manager to complain (“orlando” 2009). Eventually, Triple J modified its
“potted history” to add some women artists, however by that time voting
had long since closed for the Triple J Hottest 100 of All Time.
The initial conversation that developed around this post had several
trends. First of all, many of the commenters pointed out that they couldn’t
think of specific time periods in the history of music without thinking of
many influential female artists, and were amazed that Triple J could have
“forgotten”, “erased”, or “excluded” them from their potted history
(various commenters in “orlando” 2009). Many listed their favourite or
most obviously influential female artists. There are “so very many women
whose music has had a huge influence on alternative music that to leave
them all out is just so conspicuously and gratuitously wrong-headed”
(fuckpoliteness June 30, 2009 at 4:42 pm in “orlando” 2009) and “It’s so
typical of the erasure of women’s contribution to history: nothing counts
until a man does it” (orlando July 2, 2009 at 9:40 am in “orlando” 2009).
Some expressed dismay that a music station that had been an important
part of their youth “regards me as non-existent or hard-on-fodder”, and
argued that “JJJ are just another component of the malestream media
now” (commenters in “orlando” 2009).
The discussion continued once the results of the listener poll for the
Hottest 100 were being released and people started to realise how few
women were actually making the chart. In the end result, no solo women
1
5
artists were featured, a woman’s voice was present on only a handful of
the 100 tracks that were voted as the Triple J Hottest 100 of All Time. In
the meantime, several strands of discourse had developed on the
comments on this blog entry, and on the many other blog entries that
dealt with the issue of the lack of women in the Hottest 100 list, which
identified ways that the history of rock music excludes or erases women.
The first discourse was that taste cultures become male-dominated by
excluding women from the discourse of greatness, such that people are
“unlikely to include them when asked to name the ten songs that are the
greatest ever” (orlando July 10, 2009 at 7:04 pm in “orlando” 2009).
Another blogger, linking to “orlando”’s post, argued that “jjj erased
women in their selection of top ten from each decade” and “then of course
the listeners do that thing where male=great so they don’t bother
nominating any chicks” (“fuckpoliteness” 2009). This was also extended to
include the way people are socialised to think of “history” in general;
“[o]ur history has been made invisible to us” (Linda Radfem in
“fuckpoliteness” 2009); and to ask “why do we only think of the male
voice as authoritative?” (godardsletterboxes July 13, 2009 at 3:09 pm in
“fuckpoliteness” 2009).
“Orlando”’s post set in train a process at the end of which Australian
feminists could readily identify a systemic problem in Australian media
publics; the exclusion and erasure of women from the history of
alternative rock music. Certainly the lack of women in the Triple J Hottest
100 of All Time poll would have been a glaring fact regardless, and was
1
6
raised in various other media venues. However, through this online
conversation, women in the community developed alternative discourses
to explain women’s omission, which they could then use to counter claims
that (for example) it was a statistical anomaly, that you can’t blame the
radio station for the way the punters voted, that music is simply a matter
of
personal
taste,
that
women
simply
haven’t
produced
“great”,
“alternative” music, all of which were arguments raised by commenters in
an analogue debate on the popular blog Larvatus Prodeo and countered
with arguments drawn from those raised in the Hoyden About Town and
other posts from the feminist blogosphere (various comments in “Kim”
2009).
The second important thing to note about the way that the discussion
developed in the Australian feminist blogosphere is that the conversation
had a political intent. This is signalled in “I wonder if [this] would
encourage Triple J to reconsider its music programming?” (shinynewcoin
July 14, 2009 at 11:38 am in “shinynewcoin” 2009). Many readers and
bloggers sent letters to Triple J Radio to have the website changed.
Several participants in the debate set up alternative lists such as the
@Hottest100Women poll on Twitter (“@Hottest100Women” 2009), and
the Women’s Music Appreciation Month meme (cross-blog), in which
participants listed their favourite alternative music by female artists, in
order to reverse the erasure of women artists from the alternative music
taste culture. In this we see the direct engagement of the feminist
blogging community with the political, understood as “the leveraging of
power between connected entities”, through discourse (Senft 2008, 5).
1
7
In light of this case study, the advantages and problems of using
submerged network and abeyance theory become apparent. Does the
Australian feminist blogosphere constitute an abeyance structure? It’s
very possible that the opposite could be argued. Online communities may
have less of a function in keeping a hard kernel of organised Australian
feminism alive and more of a function in developing new activist
discourses, ideologies, and ideas, and identifying areas for activism.
However, the community also builds an alliance of women at a time when
feminism is popularly derided in the press and in popular culture, and in
this way it does resemble an abeyance structure. As Taylor explained, the
women in the abeyance organisations of the 1940s and 1950s found that
their politics and commitment to feminism “marginalised and isolated
them from the mainstream” (Taylor 1989). The same has been said about
feminists in Australia in recent times (Caro and Fox 2008; Dux 2009).
However, I am reluctant to declare the Australian feminist movement in
abeyance when so many women are publicly, discursively engaged in
feminist politics in the feminist blogosphere and outside of it. To declare
the Australian feminist blogosphere an abeyance structure is to label it in
some way inactive or even apolitical, whereas as the case study suggests,
the community is overtly activist, public, and political in nature, even if it
is composed of relatively small network of women. The discourse of the
Australian feminist blogosphere engages directly with mainstream politics
and culture.
1
8
The Australian feminist blog network is an informal network of social
movement actors involved in the work of cultural production, developing
social ties, and negotiating identities. However, to call the Australian
feminist blogosphere a submerged network in the Meluccian (1989, 1996)
sense similarly risks denying the highly public and political nature of the
discourse that occurs within the network. The primary instrumental
purpose of the debate within and between these blogs is to change the
way people think about the dominant codes in society, which fits with
Melucci’s view of submerged networks, but this is neither unintentional
nor can it be separated from the political. While Melucci (1989, 1996) saw
political action as unintentionally or accidentally brought about as a result
of the solidarities formed within informal social networks, I argue that the
negotiation of identity, cultural production, and development of discourses
within social movement networks is always-already political. The concept
of submerged networks should be modified to reflect the purposively
political nature of cultural production. Michael Warner’s concept of
counterpublics shows us why. Counterpublic theory has much to offer
social movement theory, by showing how discourse communities can be
understood as political networks (Young 1997, 158).
Counterpublics
Warner’s counterpublics are discursive publics that are based around
texts. They are “counter” in that they differ from requirements of inclusion
in the dominant cultural public, and are “defined by their tension with a
larger public” (Warner 2002, 56; 113). Their significance lies in their
1
9
constitutive, transformative social properties - counterpublic discourses
enable new political ways of being (Warner 2002, 57).
Too much research into the political potential of the internet look at online
social movements’ capacity to impact upon the state, when instead we
should look at how counterpublics online “allow us to challenge the very
conceptions of the state” (Palczewski 2001, 162). According to Fraser
(1990, 61), counterpublics “contested the exclusionary norms of the
bourgeois public” from the beginning. She uses the United States feminist
subaltern counterpublic as an example, which created an alternative
public sphere through a network of publishing houses, theatre companies,
research centres, and so on, through which the feminist counterpublic
could “formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests,
and needs” and in doing so “help expand discursive space” (Fraser 1990,
67). In contrast with submerged networks, counterpublics are “not
exclusively defined by identity”, but instead “aid in the definition of
identity” (Palczewski 2001, 165). This redefinition of identity is politicised,
rather than psychologised.
Counterpublics function as spaces for “withdrawal and regroupment” but
also function as “training grounds for agitational activities directed toward
wider publics” (Fraser 1990, 68). By definition, counterpublics form “under
conditions of domination and subordination” because of their tension with
or exclusion from mainstream publics (Fraser 1990, 70). In these ways
the concept of counterpublics has a lot in common with the concept of
abeyance structures. Firstly, they form as a result of hostility from or
2
0
exclusion from mainstream politics or public spheres. Secondly, they
enable subaltern publics to regroup for political activities.
However the concepts differ in two very important ways. Firstly, through
the emphasis on the transformative properties of discourse in the concept
of counterpublics (i.e. the counterpublic is political though not necessarily
engaged in protest activity), and secondly because the contingent,
informal nature of counterpublics themselves differs from the emphasis
placed on the “organisational base” in the concept of abeyance structures
(Taylor 1989, 761). Counterpublics are formed through informal networks,
in a “multicontextual space of circulation, organized not by a place or an
institution but by the circulation of discourse” (Warner 2002, 119).
Counterpublic theory is consistent both with the informal networks of
contemporary online social movements and with an understanding of the
social in which discourse is politically constitutive. Warner’s concept of
counterpublics
has
significance
for
our
understanding
of
minority
discourses online, and the development of alternative discursive publics
through blog networks.
Warner (2002, 97-98) expresses doubt that online texts “will be
assimilable to the temporal framework of public discourse” due to the
continuous rather than temporal nature of most online texts. However,
blogs do fit well with a temporal model of discourse “unfolding through
time”, although temporality (as well as spatiality) may be structured
differently than in other venues (Hine 2000, 103). Conversations within
and between blogs reference one another and are clearly located within a
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1
temporal framework through timestamps and comments organised into
threads which frequently take the form of turn-taking dialogues.
The Australian feminist political community, like other political blog
networks, functions as a counterpublic. Blogs allow the formation of
opinions within the community, and for bloggers to post calls for activism
and advocate for awareness around particular issues (Vatrapu et al. 2008,
14). The development of the discourse in the community over time leads
to changes in the ongoing discursive boundaries of discussion, in that the
discourse changes what it is possible for people to talk about.
Blogs add another layer of interpretation to traditional political discourse,
and are self referential in that they link to earlier posts as well as posts by
others (Vatrapu et al. 2008, 12). The layer of interpretation that the
bloggers add to Australian (and international) political discourse is
feminist, and in this way they challenge and disrupt mainstream public
discourse that is sexist or antifeminist. The engagement of blogs with one
another, as well as the engagement of blogs with the mainstream press,
leads to changes in both Australian feminist discourse and in the way that
people relate to and consume media. In this way they “expand discursive
space”, “aid in the definition of identity”, and finally “enable new political
ways of being” (Fraser 1990, 67; Palczewski 2001, 165; Warner 2002,
57). As Mowles (2008) argued in the case of Feministing (an American
feminist blog), blogs can reshape conventional political discourse.
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2
The internet has become the site of major political discourse, and of the
development of political cultures. It is the national and local level at which
this occurs that makes it so interesting (Everard 2000; Goggin 2004, 5).
Internet communities have effects on the development of national political
discourses (Mitra 1999). Lovink (2008, 205) argues that although the
realm of power that makes decisions still largely exists autonomously in
“face-to-face” settings, the decentralised networks of online communities
are developing their own forms of power in the meantime; “The Internet
can be secondary while becoming powerful at the same time” (Lovink
2008, 203). Online culture “makes possible a reconfiguring of politics
[and] a refocusing of politics on everyday life” (Kahn and Kellner 2003,
14). The increasing capacity of the “social network marketplace” online
has the potential to increase the productive and progressive capacities of
social movement networks, by broadening spaces for discourse (Hartley
2009, 47-49).
In a paper giving a summary of the current state of research into cybermovements, Palczewski (2001) concludes that studies of the political
impact of online activism have focused on political participation and
information access, while not taking into account developments in
understandings of discursive politics, including counterpublics and new
social movement theory. As a result, she explains, studies of social
movements online have replicated “both traditional social movement
studies’ focus on the state and modernists’ limited understandings of
political participation” (Palczewski 2001, 162).
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3
Conclusion
What I have outlined here is an argument for social movement theorists
to take seriously the theoretical concepts they have developed to explain
and
understand
the
contributions
of
discursive
politics
to
social
movements and social change in contemporary society. I also argue that
these concepts need to be modified to reflect the political nature of social
movement
discourses
and
the
realities
of
internet
use
within
contemporary social movements.
The case study of the debate around the Triple J Hottest 100
demonstrates the use of the feminist blogosphere in developing discourses
to explain the exclusion of women from the history of alternative music,
as well as countering that exclusion through the development of a canon
of female artists. This example, while ostensibly a minor topic for
discussion, demonstrates both the real world political effects of online
discussion and the instrumental intent of discourse.
The concepts of submerged networks and abeyance structures, while
significant developments in social movement theory, prove inadequate to
understand online social movements because of their depoliticisation of
discourse. Through the deployment of counterpublic theory and other
theories of discourse, social movement theory can evolve to engage
effectively with modern political movements. This paper is the starting
point for the development of better concepts to understand the role of
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4
online discursive communities in social movements and political publics
generally.
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